under the cold winter my love took me through the desert
by possibilist
Summary: "You've not told her you've seen her work because you think you might know too much about her already; there are spectering girls in dresses, and they don't have eyes, and the canvases are home to so many ghosts." frannie & quinn through robert (robert is frannie's boyfriend) as requested. lots & lots of headcanon backstory. faberry endgame.


**under the cold scaffolding of winter my love took me through the desert (my breath crumbling like bread)**

_._

_all i can say is that the grief of hurting is its own burden. our grief in other people's wounds, we ward it off quickly, saying _i am not this, that is not me. _we define ourselves by _not being in that place where a torture is happening—  
—tess taylor, "meeting karen white, descendant of jefferson's gardener wormely"

…

_1_

You know she's broken when her name is called, but you never thought she'd be this pretty. You're in another PolySci class—you're in your third year—and it's the first day of term and your professor says, Francis Fabray, and she says, Here, which is actually the seat next to yours, and her voice is sort of low and rough and you look at her hands and they're splattered with paint.

You feel a rush of blood all over your body. You know her paintings; you'd seen them at a student exhibition and you'd gone back a number of times because they were so profoundly sorrowful. You have no shred of artistic talent in you, but she does, a lot.

She's beautiful, you realize, as you look over at her doodling on her syllabus, gentle flecked hands shaping something like what Egon Schiele might've sketched if he had a ballpoint pen with the tip chewed on. She has long blonde hair and a jaw your brain gets immediately distracted by.

The professor lets you out early and you walk by her, hold the door open and smile. She has the bluest eyes, and it takes everything you have in you to say, Hi.

She takes you in, appraises you. For the first time you realize you are being looked at like a piece of art. She sticks out her hand, seemingly decided. I'm Frannie, she says.

You shake it. Robert, you tell her.

She smiles and then tries to rub some of the blue-green oils from her hands.

Sorry about the paint, she says.

You tell her, I don't mind.

.

_2_

Two days later she briefly mentions she's a sophomore before she launches into an excited ramble all about Diego Rivera for over an hour when you get coffee together after class.

That day you learn her coffee order: vanilla roobios tea with a splash of soy milk.

You also learn that she is absolutely brilliant and articulate and funny. You get the feeling that she's sort of effortless in all of that.

You're late to work because you don't want to make her stop talking.

.

_3_

You go see her paintings again. She's told you she paints (I paint, obviously, she says, which is why I can't ever seem to really get this shit off of my hands, sorry about that).

You've not told her you've seen her work because you think you might know too much about her already, although you have no idea _what _made her paint the pieces.

But there are spectering girls in dresses, and they don't have eyes, and the canvases are homes for so many ghosts.

.

_4_

The next Tuesday she comes to class in a Stanford sweatshirt and running shorts, her hair pulled back messily. Her eyes are tired, and you think she's probably been crying.

Afterward, for some reason you'll never really understand, you say, Frannie, as she's slowly getting up from her desk, all silent and smears of purple-black on her hands.

She looks at you instead of speaking, and you want to start crying when you really take in her face—she shouldn't be like this, you think, this sad, this hurt, and in moments you irrationally want to throttle everyone who's hurt her, despite the fact that you're 6'2 and about 170 pounds, all thin runner's length.

Have you been to Alcatraz? you ask her.

Her brows knit together and it takes her a few seconds to respond, No.

You take her hand gently. I'll take you, you say.

Right now?

Yeah.

She bites her bottom lip. Okay, she says. Yeah.

.

_5_

That day you learn that there are some small scars underneath the paint on her hands.

.

_6_

You get closer. When she's not talking about art history she's quiet. You end up telling her you'd seen her paintings before you'd met in class, and you only say that you think they're stunning and that she's so talented, and she smiles a little, this chilling glass to her eyes. You expected that.

One Saturday as it's getting cooler, she leads you around De Young and some of Shiele's work is in the special visiting collection, and she just stands in front of them.

When you get outside in Golden Gate Park she says, Can you kiss me now?

The fog and wind whip her hair across her face, so you brush it aside gently and you kiss her, you do.

It tastes so quiet.

.

_7_

The first time you sleep together she doesn't want you to take her shirt off.

.

_8_

You're sure you love her precisely when she shows you the studio she gets to work in. Somehow she's gotten keys, and you buy two bottles of wine and a six-pack of IPA and she's laughing in front of you, echoing around the empty hallway, and she unlocks the door to this expansive room with canvases and it smells like oils and vanilla and spice—it smells like Frannie.

She's wearing a dress that floats around her knees, silky and light, and she's wearing tights and boots and her hair is falling out of a braid, and she has never lit up like this before.

You drink a bottle of wine on the floor of the studio, and then she stands up unsteadily—she's _so thin_, you notice, although you don't say anything about that either—and smears oil on a palette. She paints something that you know is _you _in about half an hour. You watch, buzzed and mesmerized, as her hands and brushes move, and it's slow-fast-slow, and there's brown hair and grey eyes. And you realize, even drunk, that it's the least ghastly thing she's ever made.

She stands back, and for the first time in front of you she starts to cry, and she sits down on the floor beside you and kisses you too hard so you kiss her back softly.

It's going to be okay, you say.

Robert, she says, you have to know that I'm—you should get out now.

You shake your head.

She doesn't say anything else. She's so still for a few moments that you think she might've stopped breathing. But then she stands and turns away from you and then she unzips her dress, then slips it over her head. She takes her tights off gracefully, and there she is in the moonlight through the windows, and there's your paint on her hands.

She's wearing a thong and this tiny see-through black lace bra, and it takes you seconds to realize there are scars criss-crossing her entire back.

You should go, she says again. Her voice is low and hollow. Resigned.

Frannie, you whisper. You are absolutely horrified.

Please go, she says. Robert, please go.

You get up and she doesn't face you, doesn't move, so you walk out of the studio because you know she won't let you touch her gently again for the longest time.

You realize belatedly, down the hall, that you'd left wine and beer in the studio. That there was a small bag of _something _that fell out of Frannie's pocket when she'd undressed.

You don't stop walking. You love her, and there _is_ a part of you that wants to leave because you can't save her from any of it, and when you get outside it makes you wonder if the grief of the cool clear night will swallow you whole.

.

_9_

That night you learn:

_would you stay here loving me_

_won't you stop bloody loving me_

_._

_10_

You go to her dorm the next morning. Her roommate lets you in.

Frannie is in bed, miraculously. When you sit down on the side she groans but she doesn't flinch away from you when you hesitantly touch her shoulder.

You lay down behind her, wrap your arm across her waist and press your mouth against the back of her neck. She's trembling, and you think she might still be high. You stay very still.

A few hours later you wake up when she shifts, rolling over. Her eyes are bloodshot and she squints a little at you.

Here she is, hungover and sweating next to you, and you shouldn't love her.

I did cocaine, she says, in case you were wondering.

It's then that you realize she wants you to leave because she thinks you're going to anyway. And she wants you to leave because she loves you too.

Frannie. You say her name so she can understand there is no other option.

.

_11_

You help her into the shower, and she throws up a few times while you pick up around her dorm room.

She comes out of the bathroom in a Stanford t-shirt and running shorts, and she puts on a sweatshirt she'd stollen from you, hair still damp, and then she says, I'm really, really hungry.

You start to laugh. She joins in, and you take her hand.

You walk to what you know is her favorite cafe. You order pancakes and eggs and bacon, make sure you get the right amount of soy in her tea when you bring it to where she's sitting at a small table on the balcony.

She thanks you, and she's quiet for a while. You sit and wait.

So if it wasn't already clear, I'm fucked up, she says.

You smile gently at her. She meets your eyes.

You're not, she says.

You shrug. You have a wonderful family in Portland; your father is an architect and your mother is a nurse; your older brother is in medical school at University of Washington and he's had a steady boyfriend for the past five years. Frannie knows all of this. Frannie knows far more profoundly how lucky you are.

I'm a little fucked up, you offer.

She laughs. Amusedly. In a way that isn't self-effacing, so you take her hand.

My mom's an alcoholic, she says. I mean, sort of constantly checked out and drunk. We're pretty rich so it didn't interfere with having nice things, so.

You stay quiet while she takes a huge bite of hashbrowns, chews for a while. You've learned that Frannie requires patience. She's not told you anything about her family; you'd not pushed.

I have a little sister, she tells you. Her voice changes. She stops eating then, puts down her fork, pushes bacon around her plate. She's fourteen now.

You rub your thumb in circles over her knuckles.

She looks up at you, and then she kisses you very, very softly. Hauntingly.

When we'd get in trouble—my dad would—he used the buckle of the belt most of the time and—

She takes a deep breath to not cry and you take a deep breath so you don't punch something.

Her scars are worse than mine, Frannie says, and then she says, I tried to stop it, you have to believe me, I tried.

You collect her in your arms, and she breathes erratically for a while until she calms down on her own.

What's your sister's name? you ask.

Luc—Quinn, she says. Quinn.

.

_12_

You get her to see a therapist. After a few weeks, she tells you to go through her room while she's at the studio, and you find all _kinds _of drugs. Prescription, cocaine, weed, acid, things you can't identify in the slightest.

She gave you, in no uncertain terms, instructions to get rid of them all.

You flush them.

When she comes back from the studio, you say, They're gone.

She nods resolutely, and she kisses you, and today her hands are smudged with yellow.

.

_13_

Things get better but she's still Frannie so they don't get easy. She goes through a few different anti-depressants that don't quite work until she finds one that does. She won't let you anywhere near the scars on her back.

But there are good days. There are good moments everyday. Her laugh is one of the loveliest things you've ever known.

You know something is happening with Quinn because Frannie has nightmares, but she doesn't tell you and you don't get hurt by this, because she's in therapy and she's clean and you don't expect her to be someone else.

One day in April she goes on a _rant _at about five in the morning about colonization of indigenous peoples but their perseverance through art, and her blue eyes are soft. A little deep ocean, not this icy glass.

She's in your bed at your apartment, propped up on her elbow saying something about crosses and dragonflies, and you put your hand on the curve of her hip and you say, I love you.

Her sentence trails off. She looks at you very seriously. She says, I love you too.

.

_14_

She gets a job teaching art at a summer camp near Seattle, and you have an internship at a law firm there, and you stay with your brother Arthur and his boyfriend, Andy. You look sort of like Arthur, expect he's an inch sorter and much more muscular, but you have the same brown hair and greenish-grey eyes. Andy is slightly taller than Frannie, and he's originally from Taiwan. He and Arthur met at UCLA at a biochemistry mixer—which Frannie immediately teases them for, and they immediately love her. Your brother is in his third year of medical school, and you think he'll end up doing pediatric cardiology, and Andy is getting his doctorate in cellular biology. When he and Frannie meet—the first night—they show each other paintings and slides of cells, and you see Frannie physically sit a little straighter, her whole face light up with something you know she's fascinated by. You and Arthur sit at the kitchen table and watch them crowd up to Andy's roll-top desk.

She's beautiful, Arthur says.

She's terrifying, you say.

Arthur laughs. He says, The best people usually scare the shit out of you.

.

_15_

The summer is good. The rain is new, and Frannie is there on weekends but she has weeks to herself in evergreens and with children who want to paint like her.

It seems to heal some parts of her you never could.

Arthur and Andy help you move back to Palo Alto. Frannie keeps a dorm room—she's on full scholarship through various art foundations—but most of her things end up getting unpacked at your place.

That night the four of you have Indian food on the floor of your living room, and Frannie says, When my sister and I were little one time we moved into a bigger house, and we were playing hide and seek, and Quinn hid in a box and then fell asleep, and it took me hours to find her.

She laughs a little, and by now Arthur and Andy know this is rare too, so they just continue to eat.

When I found her I was so relieved, because I didn't know where she'd gone, and I couldn't lose her, you know? But Quinn was just asleep, so she wasn't even scared. She just woke up and wanted to play again.

.

_16_

My father left a few months ago, she tells you. I don't really give a fuck but it's probably better for Quinn that he did.

.

_17_

Frannie keeps going to therapy. You send in your applications to do a year of non-profit work in Oakland before you go to law school. She paints.

Things settle.

She goes home with you for Thanksgiving instead of going to back to Ohio, and you never bother to ask why. You don't need to.

Your parents adore her. She's whip-smart and very funny and exceedingly well-mannered and she's been clean for a while now, and the way she can light up and command attention unknowingly still amazes you, because there are so many hidden parts of Frannie, and you know that so much of her you've unearthed.

She shows Andy prints of her new series based off of cells in different stages of division.

You take a walk in the rain after Thanksgiving dinner, and she's gained probably five pounds in the past year. You can still see her ribs and her hips jut bone, but she's softer, just barely, and you've both had a silent agreement that you'd help her feel okay about food if she'd try to cook with you.

You're beautiful, you say, and you kiss the top of her head.

You're beautiful, she says, and it's breathless, and you know she doesn't mean _handsome_. Frannie _paints_, and you know that this means she is very, very much in love with you.

You tug her closer. It keeps raining and she splashes in puddles as you walk back home, laughing.

.

_18_

She spends winter break with you.

You don't mind at all, but it does break you heart a little that she can't stand to go home.

She paints a whole series of rain and shadows for you as a gift.

You don't know what exactly to get someone like her, someone you love so much who holds everything in her hands, who can give you stunning things that you can never compete with.

So you rent a cabin in the woods near Aspen for a week, and you go with her, and you make sure there are canvases and oils and charcoal and sketchpads in spades, and she paints so gently you can hear the snow in her work.

.

_19_

One cold day in February, she comes to meet you in Oakland after work like always, and she's cut her hair to just below her shoulders. Frannie isn't erratic—she's been stable for a long time—and when you see the set of her hips you know this means something.

She takes your hand and you tell her that she's beautiful, and she is, and she shakes her head, and the way to your apartment is quiet.

It's afternoon still, blindingly bright with clouds, and your apartment has so many windows, and when you get inside she tugs at your pants and you lace your fingers through her hair, which is even softer than usual.

And then she backs away, and for a second you wonder what you've done wrong—unless Frannie initiates things you still ask for verbal consent from the beginning, because she's unsure of herself occasionally, but she had initiated everything—but then she pulls her shirt from the bottom hem up over her head, and she slips out of her jeans, and she undoes her bra, takes her panties off, and walks over to you.

She holds your hands and then she kisses you, and she's drenched in cloud-filtered light this time, and then She turns around, and her hair is short enough so that her entire back is exposed now, and she says, It's okay.

You trace her scars. From her father's belt buckle. You want to punch the wall but it's the gentlest you've ever been.

Hours later, once you're sure she's asleep, you cry in the bathroom.

.

_20_

The next year is healing.

The next year you learn how to kiss her scars.

She learns how to let you.

.

_21_

You expect to meet her family at her graduation.

You don't.

Instead, your mother cheers loudly when she accepts her diploma, and Arthur and Andy are engaged, and when your father gives her a hug and says, We're so proud of you, she cries and smiles, and she holds your hand, you've never really seen her look this happy.

.

_22_

You spend the summer after she graduates in Los Angeles because you got a fantastic internship. Frannie despises LA, but she finds space at a studio there because of someone one of her professors knew, and you repeatedly tell her she doesn't have to come with you.

She waves your comments off and she grumbles the entire time, but her skin picks up freckles you've never seen before, and her hair gets very blonde, and her eyes get very blue.

.

_23_

You both got into schools on the east coast, but Frannie wants to spend more time in the bay, you know, and she accepts a position in an MFA program at California College of the Arts, and you start law school at Stanford, and you rent a house in the Mission together.

One day she comes home with her hair cut almost as short as yours, and she shrugs and smiles, and you don't really care at all, because she's Frannie and you realize at that moment that you'd signed onto this—paint on hands and moments of spontaneity, all of her effortless charm and dark, dark cracks—years ago.

I think it'll grow on me, you say, and she laughs and laughs and then gives you a high five.

Good pun, she says excitedly, and you smile and roll your eyes and kiss her forehead and get started on dinner while she changes into one of your old t-shirts before coming to help you slice the vegetables.

.

_24_

There are a few unexpectedly bad days and she doesn't tell you why. You know to wait, always with Frannie.

One Tuesday night you have a beer with some of your old friends from university so you're back home later than normal, and when you get back Frannie isn't there. She doesn't answer her phone, and you suppress panic—she'd been moody the past few days, but clean, eating; she'd gone running with you yesterday—and head to her studio.

The door is cracked when you get there, and you push it open.

Frannie is sitting on the floor in front of an absolutely brilliant and terrifying painting—a new thing, a ghastly thing with blacks and this chilling blush of rosewater pink, and this specter has eyes, ones that you've gathered by now are probably what Quinn's eyes look like, green-gold. The painting is literally bleeding, the pinks dripping their way down the canvas and puddling beneath it on the concrete.

There's a bottle of Bombay Sapphire next to Frannie on the floor, and at least half of it is gone, and Frannie isn't moving at all, but she is crying.

I left, she says.

You stay still.

Quinn, she says. I should've stayed. She needed me to stay. And I left because I couldn't stop it. I wasn't enough to make things better and—

You panic. You panic because if something happened to Quinn you have no idea what Frannie would be capable of.

Is Quinn—

She's using, Frannie says.

You don't ask what, and you don't ask why this is heartbreaking.

Frannie only really ever talks about Quinn when she drinks too much gin, and that's extremely rare.

Have I shown you pictures of her? she slurs.

You sit down next to her and shake your head. You don't touch her; you know that would be extremely counterproductive at this point, and she takes out her phone and hands it to you.

Quinn looks so much like Frannie it floors you. They have the same cheeks, the same jaw, the same nose, the same defiant tilt of the chin. But in this picture Quinn's nose is pierced, and her hair is short and choppy and pink, although you sense that there is some blonde peeking through.

That's my baby sister, she whispers. I never ever wanted her to feel like me.

You don't exactly know what she's talking about but you can imagine because when you look at Quinn's eyes they take your breath away because Frannie's eyes used to terrify you, with how defensive they seemed. But Quinn's eyes are just hollow and hurt, blown pupils and all.

.

_25_

You take the next day off from school.

You take Frannie to Alcatraz, and she won't let you keep the lights on later that night.

.

_26_

Frannie yells at her mother over the phone, and after she hangs up she presses in headphones and bolts out of the house in a sports bra and running shorts, and you wait for her to bounce back in about twenty seconds later, mortified and crying, because she'd forgotten a t-shirt.

.

_27_

Things, however, improve. Frannie starts talking to Quinn more, and seemingly things get a little better. In some very bizarre way Frannie is naively hopeful about everything, but from what she's told you about her little sister, you can guess that Quinn isn't going to be okay for a very long time.

But Frannie tells you that Quinn got into Yale, and she is so excited.

You are excited with her, but nothing about Stanford would've ever saved Frannie, and you wonder if she realizes this too.

.

_28_

You have a fight over something completely irrelevant and she storms off to paint afterward.

It's February, and you're angry, so you go for a run in the cold to calm down. You leave your phone at home.

You're probably gone an hour, and when you get back she's frantically packing, and you stop immediately, heart flying because it really wasn't a fight about anything and you'd been fine lately and you've been thinking about rings and—

She flings her arms around you and she's crying and somewhere in a lot of incoherent rambling you make out, Quinn was in a car accident and I have to go home, and you collect her very gently and sit her on the couch, and you make her tea and pack a suitcase and buy two plane tickets without even thinking about it.

It hits both of you somewhere over Utah that you automatically left everything to go with her, and she puts her head against your shoulder and says, Thank you.

.

_29_

It's bad.

When you first see Quinn you have to stop yourself very consciously from walking out of the room, because she looks far too much like Frannie for you to not imagine, quickly, your very beautiful and very brave girlfriend with a tube down her throat and a monitor in her skull and a black eye and tubes running from lots of places, full of blood.

Most likely, they told you, she won't be able to walk again, and she might not have full brain function, and her lungs aren't quite working. They also told you all of that after they told you, There's about a 50% chance she won't make it through the night.

And then it all happens at once—Frannie's hand in yours, and she sits down and takes Quinn's hand in her own and keeps yours squeezed in the other, and you sit down beside her, and you look between them and Frannie is here and safe and whole, and you're in the ICU which means family only which means—

This is your sister too, and this is the farthest from ghosts any of you have ever been.

.

_30_

Frannie weeps. In the middle of the night, almost silently, tears and snot soaking Quinn's hand.

I'm so sorry, Frannie says. Please just—I'm so sorry.

You pretend to be asleep because Frannie needs to say these things sometimes when she thinks no one else can hear her.

.

_31_

The next day you meet Judy. She's beautiful too and both of her daughters look like her.

Quinn gets better, marginally but steadily. Judy doesn't say much and there is so much guilt in that one hospital room—you've known for years that Frannie had been broken but Quinn had been shattered—that you have to leave under the guise of coffee.

You get both of them food—all kinds of food, because Frannie was so particular and you figure it might be a family trait.

Two girls are in there when you get back. They've both been crying, and they're probably Quinn's age, and Frannie and Judy aren't anywhere you can see.

One of the girls, with black hair, ignores you. She's staring intensely at Quinn, who isn't moving. The other one waves and she says, I'm Brittany, and this is Santana, and Frannie lied for us so we could see Quinn for a little. She and Judy are outside in the garden.

Santana rips her gaze away from Quinn. Who are you?

Robert, you say, Frannie's boyfriend.

Brittany smiles. You're very cute, she says.

You laugh and put most of the food down on a small table in the corner of the room. You guys can have whatever you want. I'll be outside with Frannie if you need anything, you add, although you don't really know why.

You're almost out of the room when Santana quietly says, Thank you.

.

_32_

You stay at Judy and Quinn's house. They moved since Frannie left for university, and there's not much evidence of her left.

Judy stays at the hospital that night, and Frannie soundlessly wanders into Quinn's room. You wait at the doorway. It reminds you in so many ways of Frannie, but Quinn is also different: There's a guitar in the corner, a crate of vinyl and a record player, more books stacked in cases on then on the floor than the two of you own put together.

Frannie sits down in the middle of the floor and stays still long enough that you know you can sit next to her.

She's way smarter than me, Frannie says. Always was. Too smart, you know? Like, the kind of smart that made everything too much to deal with. Frannie's chin trembles. How could I ever paint anything else if she dies? she asks, and her voice cracks but she doesn't cry. She stands instead and then helps you up, takes calming breaths.

She's always been way too special for this world, she says.

.

_33_

Quinn does wake up though. And her brain does work. And her lungs begin to heal.

Things get slightly less terrifying progressively. But Quinn is in more pain, because Quinn has been on a lower dose of morphine for the past day. So when you and Frannie were there this morning she had snapped at Frannie multiple times and they mostly bickered (which a part of you sort of found so comforting, because it seemed so normal).

But when you get back a few hours later, there's a girl sitting on the edge of Quinn's bed, running her fingers carefully through Quinn's short blonde hair, and Quinn's smiling as much as she can and you can tell she's talking softly, and you and Frannie stop and watch through the window instead of going in. You look over at Frannie and her eyes are wide and she's grinning.

She starts laughing, and she elbows you playfully, and she says, Looks like we both have flamingly queer siblings, and you know she means it with incredible love—Arthur and Andy are, she's told you multiple times, sober and drunk, two of her very favorite people in the world—and so you hold up your coffee cup and say, To gay siblings, and she very dramatically clinks her cup of tea with yours.

Cheers, she says.

.

_34_

Her name is Rachel Berry, Quinn says, and you watch in amusement as to who can possibly smile bigger at this moment, because Frannie looks like she's just about to burst at the seams.

But neither of them really say anything more than that, although something seems to have been lifted, just slightly.

.

_35_

Frannie is in the bathroom later and you have to go home the next day because you've both missed as much school as you can manage, and Quinn looks at you, and she's in a lot of pain because they'd taken the monitor out of her skull early that morning in surgery, but her eyes are clear and you know she's just about to have more morphine.

Thank you, she says. For Frannie.

You understand. You nod, and you take her hand and she squeezes yours before she falls asleep.

.

_36_

They're saying goodbye.

Quinn can't feel her legs and no one can tell you if she'll ever walk again, but you've learned she's a dancer, and you think maybe she can.

She and Frannie are sitting up on the side of Quinn's bed, backs to where you're watching from the doorway. Frannie's wearing a sweater but Quinn is wearing a hospital gown, and it's open. There are more scars than Frannie has, deeper ones, and a new one—red and raw—straight down the lower part of Quinn's spine.

You can see Quinn laugh a little bit, though, when Frannie says something; both of their shoulders shift.

They're both very, very beautiful.

.

_37_

Quinn learns to walk again, and she goes to Yale. Frannie expects things to get better for her, and they keep in touch daily—something about Quinn's dislodged bones drew them together, took away years of apologies.

Things don't really get better for Quinn, though, which you aren't surprised by, because you knew Frannie then.

Quinn visits during her first year and when you come home from school that evening, Frannie tastes like cigarettes when you kiss her hello.

.

_38_

Things don't get better.

They do for Frannie, who seems to be doing better than ever. Her eyes are clear, she's gotten into baking; she has a semester left before she gets her Master's degree, and you're finishing up too.

You apply to firms in Boston and New York without asking.

You know Quinn is using and you know Quinn is sleeping with anyone—Frannie tells you these things, so sadly.

You get a job in Boston and Frannie gets studio space there and an assistant professorship at RISD, and one night you propose because she's more than you'd ever be able to lose.

She says yes.

.

_39_

You move to Boston in the fall.

Quinn seems maybe a little bit better when she visits, and she sits down at the table one morning and says, You guys know I'm gay, right?

You nod and Frannie says, Yes.

Rachel and I are dating, Quinn says. She tries to smile.

It's the most sorrowful thing you've ever seen.

.

_40_

Things get worse.

Things get way worse.

Most days are good between you and Frannie. You start planning your wedding; work is fantastic; your friends in the new city are lovely people; Arthur and Andy adopted a little girl from China.

All of a sudden one day you really, really learn what it's like to be fully integrated into someone's family because Quinn shows up on your doorstep while Frannie's out getting groceries from the market, and Quinn has a broken hand and she's high, and you take her inside, put ice on her hand, and then call Frannie, who meets you at the hospital.

You remember a time when you felt as helpless as this with Frannie, who is healthy and bright now, but you can't quite remember this much violence, this much desolation, this much fear.

.

_41_

Your wedding is more than you'd hoped for your whole life. Mostly because you think it feels so organic, because neither you nor Frannie really planned on spending your lives with other people, you know. It's a lot of artists and a lot of lawyers, which makes for an amusing mix. Arthur is your best man, and Quinn pulls her shit together enough to look absolutely stunning as Frannie's maid of honor.

Quinn brings a girl named Spencer to the wedding, and Spencer is brooding and intense and stunningly pretty.

You spend most of your time looking at Frannie, though, and you go on your honeymoon to Aspen and Frannie doesn't wear clothes for days, white paint smudged on her hands.

.

_42_

Quinn tries to commit suicide.

Frannie cries off and on for a few days, paints these startlingly dark pieces that she's not gone near in years.

She's worse than I ever was, she says one night in the dark.

Yeah.

She got diagnosed with bipolar I, she says.

What does that mean? you ask.

I don't really know, Frannie says.

She's going to be okay, you say, and you tug her to you then, and you hold her tightly, warmly.

.

_43_

You go with Frannie to visit a week later. You get a hotel room that's big enough for ghosts.

Quinn's left wrist has thirty-one stitches.

She doesn't try to hide them.

.

_44_

When you get back to Boston, Frannie goes to the studio in your apartment, puts red on a pallet, and weeps.

.

_45_

You're happy to have Quinn spend the summer with you.

Sometimes Frannie still tastes like cigarettes, and sometimes Quinn refuses to eat, and sometimes you spend hours on the roof of your building with Quinn in the middle of the night, but she never jumps.

.

_46_

Quinn gets put on new medicine, she texts you—you're not sure when the two of you started texting, but you had because sometimes Frannie couldn't—and she says that she thinks it's working.

She Skypes with Frannie later that night, and Quinn's eyes are different, and Quinn is a senior and finally in her own apartment, this little thing with vintage furniture and granite countertops.

What if I'm stable? Quinn asks, breathless.

Frannie just smiles.

.

_47_

It works and things get better.

Quinn visits one weekend soon, and she's brighter than you've ever seen her, which makes Frannie brighter.

You're eating dinner and Quinn asks, Do you think I'm better enough to be good for Rachel?

You say, I think you're great.

The next night they get drunk one night when you're working late. When you come home they're asleep on the couch, Quinn entirely on top of Frannie, cheek pressed against Frannie's chest.

Frannie's arms are around Quinn's back, and they're very young and very pretty and very alive.

.

_48_

Quinn brings Rachel to visit one weekend. They are happy.

.

_49_

When I first found out things about you and Quinn I kind of wanted to kill your parents, you say over breakfast one morning.

Frannie's hands are smudged gold and green and blue. She stares at them and then laughs, but it's sad. We made it though.

You did, you say.

You've asked if she feels ready for kids, and she's said no for over a year now.

But today she meets your eyes, and today she says, Do you think I'd be a good mom?

You say, The very best.

She smiles.

.

_50_

You name your daughter Lucy.


End file.
